Collaborating to address medical systems changes in cancer care with community initiation and accountability

Background: There has been a trend over the last decade of research funding to support the equitable involvement of community partners as leaders in designing and delivering projects that affect their community; especially to address the disparity in cancer mortality rates that remain between White and African American patients. A 10-year, community-academic-medical partnership exists in Greensboro, NC for the purpose of promoting racial equity in healthcare, and building upon previous research work to address its community's concerns. Methods: Recently, the partnership collaborated to write, and was awarded, a systems change intervention grant (R01 application to NCI: Accountability for Cancer Care through Undoing Racism and Equity; ACCURE). The goal is to increase racial equity in treatment for early stage breast and lung cancer at two cancer centers. Grounded in the principles of transparency and accountability as taught by The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Undoing Racism™ training, the partnership decided to introduce 2 transparency and 2 accountability intervention components in the participating health care systems to produce systems change. Discussion: Past studies performed by the collaboration highlighted the probability of system-related structural bias in cancer care. This presentation will highlight the use of those data by the partnership to develop interventions to address these barriers to equitable outcomes; as well as positive and negative ways that the partnership was affected by the grant implementation. Conclusion: By collaborating to write and manage ACCURE with local accountability, this partnership has yielded a model that aims to eliminate disparities and improve healthcare systems.